This is the Friends of History Debating Society.

I'm John Batchsler with Professor H. J. McHender in a National Relations,

commenting on five capitals in Ukraine conflict.

Washington, D.C., after the midterm election fell asleep, or apparently fell asleep.

The maneuvering has to do with next year's Congress, and also with what I can understand

to be the ambitions of a lame duck to spend money.

However, in terms of foreign policy, it's very hard to hear anything.

It's like, it's as if the bird song has fallen silent.

Professor, what do you make of the presence of the U.S. right now?

Apparently, we're allowing new weapon systems to be debated about whether they're going

to be shipped to Ukraine, but then again, there are reports that we have deliberately

limited the ability of Ukraine to strike into Russia.

So we would say that Washington is against Ukraine widening the conflict before.

It was for Ukraine widening the conflict.

What is your measure of D.C. going into the new year?

Well, I think, sadly, that D.C. gets very low marks of what you just said about.

We were limiting the war until, really, it's the war that's educating us.

We're learning that you can't manage wars very well.

You have to fight them and win.

And if you don't, they get bigger and then they become harder to fight and harder to win.

We've been looking for ways of getting around the need to actually defeat Russia.

There have been talks about secret plans.

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